Britain today is a whining nation of entitlement, endlessly wanting it all, right now. As he recalls his parents’ rigid moral code, Rod Liddle realises he and his fellow Cold War kids are the cause

Liddle with his mother in Margate in 1977. Her beliefs, both religious and social, are no longer shared by much of Britain

I got an aeroplane for Christmas when I was six years old. Not a real one, but
a heavy tinplate thing with chunky red flashing plastic lights on the wings
and some sort of noise box that made a piercing shriek.

I’d seen it in, I think, the toy department of Selfridges in Oxford Street on
the annual trip to town where I got to visit Santa’s grotto and choose my
present for the year.

“Why would you want a plane?” my mum asked with a sort of perplexed distaste.
None of us had ever been on one, nor were likely to. Aside from the
unimaginable cost and the fear of flying, my family didn’t really hold with
abroad.

My dad had been outside Britain only once, briefly, to shell bits of Belgium
from his motor torpedo boat during the final stages of the Second World War.
They shelled it